


Family Values

by shinyopals



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Jane Foster, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), F/M, Fosterson Week, Jane Foster is part alien, Jane Foster saves the world again, Loki is still figuring it out, POV Loki (Marvel), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Thor loves his brother
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 20:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16604756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinyopals/pseuds/shinyopals
Summary: ‘It would have been kinder to leave me dead,’ Loki informs her one day.Jane Foster, who’s just revoltingly kissed Thor goodbye, told him she loves him, and called him a disturbing pet name, snorts derisively. ‘He brought you lunch; quit whining,’ she says.Loki isn't sure how he feels about his family, these days.





	Family Values

**Author's Note:**

> For [Fosterson Week 2018](https://fostersonweek.tumblr.com/post/179439101777/here-it-is-folks-the-post-youve-all-been), day 2, **Thor 3/ Infinity War Era or canon divergence AU**. 
> 
> Takes place a year or so after Infinity War and makes use of that currently popular tumblr theory that part of the reason Jane could survive the Aether in Thor 2 is because she's half Celestial (and Peter Quill's half sister). All of the actual Infinity War plot resolution takes place off screen. Maybe one day I'll write that multichapter gen fic, but not this day.

He comes to the library for solitude.

Well, _library_ seems barely the word. Not compared to what was. There’s the fifty or so books taken by the refugees, the last straws grasped as their lives died around them. (Childrens’ books, mostly, aimed to quash the desperate wails of those who’d seen family and friends perish before their eyes.) There’s three hundred more books stored in the databanks of the ship and its devices. (Books on ship repair, interstellar navigation, a few tall tales to pass the long days, and a truly astounding proportion of pornography to pass the even longer nights.) Already the number of Midgardian books outnumber Asgardian. For that’s where they’ve settled: a northern corner of a pitiful planet whose inhabitants are killing itself and each other. With Thanos defeated and borrowed money, it turned out to be surprisingly easy to negotiate a few small islands to park their ship and build a new home. Loki sincerely hopes his brother has a backup plan for when the air is choked, for even if the Midgardians will be dead by then, he hopes not to be.

Thor is busy rebuilding a realm, however. Asgardian memories are long and its education broad, so the survivors build upwards and outwards with magic and borrowed technology, fortunately without needing the millions upon millions of written records that were destroyed. Thor focusses their people on halls to live, and healing rooms, and power generation and other essentials. Soon a school and a proper, permanent home for the books will be ready, but it is not yet finished, so a dark and dirty corner of the spaceship is where they live now, and it is a place where few wish to visit.

So Loki goes there for solitude, when he’s tired of wary looks, or brotherly heartiness and blind optimism, or the memory of a realm he didn’t think was his, right up until he destroyed it.

Unfortunately, the solitude does not last. Soon, _she_ ’s always there.

‘It would have been kinder to leave me dead,’ he informs her one day.

Jane Foster, who’s just revoltingly kissed Thor goodbye, told him she loves him, and called him a disturbing pet name, snorts derisively. ‘He brought you lunch; quit whining,’ she says.

‘He brought _you_ lunch.’ He brought enough for three. A family lunch. For that’s what Thor’s determined that they are now: a family. It’s absurd, ridiculous, entirely wrong. Loki still ate the lunch.

‘It’s not like I wanted to bring you back to life,’ she says. ‘It was pretty hard channelling the stones, you know.’

‘Liar,’ says Loki, both because Jane Foster, his sister-in-law, his _Queen_ , turned out to be half Celestial, and because he knows _why_ she brought him back.

‘Ugh, whatever,’ she says. ‘It’s not my fault your brother likes you, despite your best efforts to the contrary. Besides, we saved everyone Thanos had killed. It wasn’t really our place to sort the nice people from the assholes.’

‘You had the power to control the entire universe,’ says Loki irritably. ‘If not your place, then whose?’

‘Are you really, seriously complaining I didn’t kill you? Because, like, I will gladly punch you now if you want.’

‘You know that was hardly the question.’

‘I’m not a God, and I don’t want to be.’ She folds her hands over the book she’d been reading. ‘I know that’s weird to you, Mr Megalomaniac, but not all of us want ultimate power.’

‘Of course, My Queen,’ he mutters, bowing where he sits.

She scowls and opens her mouth, and then shuts it again and shakes her head with amusement. ‘God you’re annoying,’ she says, and he finds himself almost smiling. ‘You know that’s not a power thing. You know that it’s because your brother is wonderful, gorgeous, incredibly sweet, a wonderful-’

‘All right, all right, shut up,’ he says, narrowing his eyes. ‘You know I was actually _sympathetic_ to him when you two ended it. That was clearly a wasted effort.’

‘OK, firstly, don’t think I’m not going to ask Thor what exactly counted as “sympathetic” later-’

‘If you must know, I mean that I did not say what I was thinking,’ says Loki, with dignity. Given that Thor had dragged him from the throne and ruined all his wonderful plans, _and_ meant he’d miss that evening’s theatre production, he thinks that counts for a lot. ‘He seemed to appreciate it.’

Jane stares at him for a moment and shakes her head. ‘You know what, fine. That does sound pretty good by your standards. I mean, I was assuming you meant you’d stabbed him extra lightly or something.’

‘You’re very smug for someone who’s never spent a thousand years with an obnoxious older brother,’ he says. ‘I’ll remember this once you and Quill have actually spent some time together and realised how irritating it is. I’m sure you’ll come asking for advice on fratricide at that point.’

‘ _Secondly_ ,’ says Jane, rolling her eyes, ‘it’s partially thanks to you that Thor and I got back together again, so thanks, _brother_.’

Loki considers this for a moment, and then returns his gaze determinedly to his work. He is not interested in Jane Foster, he decides. She is being deliberately tiresome. His work is far more important. He’s writing instead of reading, for he has knowledge that should be recorded and not lost. Not to mention he’s also exhausted his extremely limited Asgardian options and isn’t going to read pornography with Jane right there and Thor likely to appear at any moment he can find time.

‘Not gonna ask?’ she says, sing-song.

‘This is a library, we should read,’ he says crisply.

Mostly he knows this is better than it could have been. His crimes are pardoned, for his part in saving their people from first the Dark Elves and then Hela, and his assistance, however futile, in the battle against Thanos. He has rooms, food, respect, companionship, a family of sorts. He doesn’t even want the throne when it entails working and rebuilding for near fifteen hours a day, every day except the feast days. The price he must pay for this life, however, is that he cannot stab his sister-in-law (or his brother) no matter how much they publicly kiss, embrace, or make revolting cooing noises at one another, even when she deliberately baits him.

She’s reading again, taking notes as she does, and he watches her through narrowed eyes. A strange choice for a Queen of Asgard. Not, of course, that Asgard is itself any more. She is the reason a school and proper library are next to be built. She argued Thor into a corner one day in the very room they now sit. When asked his opinion, Loki backed her. If there is to be a future, there must be somewhere for people to learn. Not that Thor had seemed to disagree, which is perhaps the largest transformation of all. 

Strange to think how the fates have tied the three of them together. Thor, banished to Midgard because of him and returning because of her. All three of them needed to stop the rise of the Dark Elves. Then he and Thor had cleared a path for Thanos in destroying Asgard, and Jane had ended it and brought Loki back, a debt repaid. 

Now, the new Asgard will have a school and a library before it has an army, and it is Loki, Jane and Thor that made it so.

‘What?’ she says, when she notices his gaze. ‘Tired of reading already?’

‘Little sister,’ he says, only half mockingly. ‘You’re nearly as tiresome as either of Odin’s children. Go on, tell me how I brought you back together, so that I might steal the Time Stone from the wizard and rid myself of an extremely irritating reality.’

She snorts dismissively. ‘It wasn’t just you, jackass,’ she says. ‘And I think you’d struggle to take the Time Stone back into the singularity.’ For a moment he is confused, but then he remembers that bringing the stones together and using them as she did created a singularity. She speaks of the battle.

‘Are you going to tell me that bringing me back from the dead is what made you want to marry my brother?’

‘It would have been easier to kill you,’ says Jane pointedly. ‘The stones… they _want_ to be used.’ She furrows her brows a little and touches her hands together. Remembering power, he thinks. It is a miracle that she did resist it, in some ways. He wouldn't have. He wouldn't have wanted to, so he would not even have tried. ‘They didn’t want to restore the universe as-is. They want to be the tools of gods. We could have remade the world any way we wanted. Could have chosen the good guys and killed the bad guys. Shaped history. And it’s not so hard to think of you as one of the bad guys.’ She gives him a wry smile and he shrugs. The bards write the tales of the winners. Now the tales will be rewritten to make him a hero. It matters little. ‘It would have been so easy,’ says Jane, almost to herself. Then she shakes her head. ‘Somewhere around about the time I was fighting my ass off to save your skin, I figured I probably still loved your brother a lot.’

‘How wonderful for you,’ says Loki indifferently. ‘As I said before, it would have been kinder to leave me dead.’ 

‘Well as discussed, it wasn’t really about you,’ says Jane complacently. ‘I did it for Thor.’

‘This is the worst possible timeline,’ says Loki, at least partially because he feels it’s expected of him. And partially because his brother in a relationship is always intensely irritating.

‘Really? Worse than you and half the rest of the universe dead?’ says Jane, with no small degree of sarcasm.

Loki shrugs. On the whole he prefers being alive, but that doesn’t mean he has to tell her that. He doesn’t even mind that his brother seems happy. He just wishes he’d be less publicly so. It’s disgusting.

‘What now?’ asks Jane. She closes her book and regards him seriously. ‘You haven’t stabbed anyone or tried to take over a planet in at least a year. You settling down on Midgard to become a librarian?’

Loki considers the question seriously. He is content enough, for now. It’s not an exciting life, but neither was prison. He has persuaded Thor that a theatre and an art gallery need to be high priorities in their new home, so he has many of the benefits of kingship without having to work for it. Plus everyone seems to expect him to be unpleasant, so most people he interacts with seem almost pleased if he’s rude to them, which suits his temperament enormously (even if it probably is hindering his prospects for sex amongst all but the most masochistic).

He gives Jane a shrug. ‘A peaceful, family life?’ he suggests, with mock innocence.

‘It’s a serious question,’ says Jane. ‘Do you still want Thor’s job? Thor’s not going to want it forever.’

He blinks. ‘What?’

‘I mean, I’m going to try and convince him on the benefits of democracy, but it’s your family too, so you probably get to be in on those debates when he decides to retire.’

‘You’re… what? I have seen the state of your planet. I don’t think democracy is an improvement.’

‘Maybe not, but if we can build a system from the ground up, who knows? Point is, if we try, are you going to get all murdery?’

‘Right now there is nothing I would like less than to rule these forsaken mounds of rock,’ says Loki firmly.

‘Good qualifier,’ says Jane. ‘Makes me think you might not be lying. Well then you should know that I’m pregnant, so even if we give up on the democracy thing, you won’t be the heir any more.’

For a second time, he is speechless. ‘Very well,’ he says eventually. They stare across the table at each other. ‘Is this afternoon’s conversation going to turn to you asking me not to hurt a poor, pregnant mortal, shortly after you’ve tried to be as irritating as possible?’

Jane scoffs. ‘Haven’t you been listening? This afternoon’s conversation has been me telling you I saved your life for Thor’s sake. And now I’m telling you Thor’s feelings are not going to be my top priority if I have to decide who lives or dies in the future.’

‘Ah,’ says Loki. He cannot argue, for it seems a fair warning. He doubts they’ll be getting into many situations where his life is in her hands.

‘And believe me, if you show even the slightest inclination towards harming my kid, I’m going to kill you.’

Loki feels a rising irritation. He did not come here to be threatened. ‘Now you sound like my brother,’ he says, with a curled lip. ‘Don’t forget you’re still half mortal, sister. Quill himself spoke of how hard it is to harness a Celestial’s power.’

‘My brother’s human side is pretty neurotypical,’ says Jane. ‘I have a whole bunch of things, but one of those things is being really, amazingly good at hyper-focussing on something. Physics usually. Magic sometimes. Alien powers now. How do you think I held onto the Aether the first time around? Do you think I can’t do it again?’ For a moment there’s a flash of red in her eyes and Loki jumps. He hadn’t expected that.

‘Have you still-?’ 

Because she’d _let it go_. She’d purged the stones and sent them away and made herself ordinary again.

‘Mostly,’ she says. She smiles thinly and for that moment he cannot help but remember the power she wielded. ‘It’s still connected to me. It’s hard for anyone, even a half-Celestial, to get rid of that sort of magic. I’m sure you know that.’

‘Well the good news is I don’t _want_ to kill your child,’ he says, trying to suppress that he is rattled. Life seemed more peaceful with the stones far away. This connection to them is not one he wants in his family. It will only invite trouble. ‘You can cease threatening me. To be king of a realm that’s nearly gone has no appeal.’

‘Good,’ she says firmly. There’s caution in her eyes still as she watches him.

‘I would have thought my brother would wish to share the news with me himself,’ he asks, raising an eyebrow. ‘Maybe with a threat, but these days maybe even with a _family_ theme.’

‘Oh, yeah, he’s gonna tell you later. I’d appreciate it if you can pretend to be surprised.’

‘ _Really_? You’re asking me to maintain your lies?’

She snorts. ‘Do what you want, buddy. I’m just saying he’d be a lot happier to have a bit of a brotherly moment as opposed to a “I know already because your wife threatened to murder me earlier” moment.’

Loki sighs. ‘Sometimes, little sister, I think you’re a poor fit for the family. This is not one of those times. Threats and lies? We’re practically twins.’

‘Can’t tell if that’s a compliment or not,’ says Jane, with what is almost a smile. ‘Don’t worry though. I’ll tell him the murder threat happened, I’ll just say it was after he told you the news. He’ll pout at me much the same either way but he won’t be that mad. He’ll probably be relieved. He’s going to be thinking the same thing as me, he just won’t want to express it because he, know you, loves you.’

At that, Loki grumbles under his breath and looks back to his writing. There’s been quite enough conversation for now, he decides.

~*~

‘Loki!’ Thor is beaming broadly, his arm around Jane. There is, however, a slight protectiveness in his posture. He puts himself between Jane and Loki. Loki begrudgingly supposes his reservations might be justified. ‘We have some family news!’

A beat. ‘Indeed?’ says Loki. 

It’s not because he cares about Thor being happy, he reminds himself. It’s because he wants to put his unexpectedly dangerous sister-in-law at ease.

‘I understand this may… feel strange,’ says Thor. ‘Perhaps it may upset you or worry you. I hope you will talk with me, if that is the case.’

‘Oh, get on with it,’ says Loki waspishly. He reaches for a flagon to pour himself some ale. The Midgardian stuff is weakly made and nothing special, but the taste is familiar in a realm that still doesn’t feel quite like home.

‘Jane is pregnant,’ announces Thor. He has tensed slightly, watching Loki for a reaction.

‘How tedious for her,’ says Loki. Thor immediately sulks. ‘What? Did you want a congratulations? Trillions of people do it every year.’ Thor still looks sulky. ‘Oh all right, fine, well done, I’m so glad you’re happy. If it calls me “Uncle”, I shall not be pleased.’

Thor is smiling again, and claps an arm around Loki’s shoulders. Loki grits his teeth on principle.

‘We thought to announce it to everyone at the next feast day,’ says Thor. ‘The first child of the new Asgard.’

‘And of Midgardian origin too. A far cry from the old,’ says Loki. ‘Maybe it will give our people some hope of the future.’

For that, he receives a smile from his brother. He’s not sure how he feels about that.

‘Midgardian-Celestial-Aesir origin,’ corrects Jane. ‘And if my brother convinces Gamora to marry him then that basically means we’ve got Great-Uncle-by-marriage Thanos in addition to Aunty Hela and Grandad Ego, so you better step up your game, _Uncle Loki_.’

Thor frowns. ‘I don’t think we should be _encouraging_ that,’ he says. Jane smiles up at him innocently and winks at Loki.

Loki laughs. Against his better judgement. All the same, perhaps there are worse additions to the family than Jane Foster. 

Even if he is going to have to make sure he has enough magic to take out a Celestial. Just in case.


End file.
